#SO was watching TWW earlier and gave me A Look when I said Amy and Mandy in the same sentence

[stabbitytuesday]

I will never write even (more than?) the barest of outlines for this fic but Mandy/Amy +/- Josh Lyman have bizarrely strong Wicked Political AU energy and I can't stop thinking about it

College roommates in the same major, had a weird moment that almost could have been something once but never spoke about it before they graduated and moved to opposite sides of the country.

Mandy's the Glinda (it's about wins and losses and chess pieces are there to be sacrificed) so when her couldawouldashoulda-almost-ex shows up dating her real life actual ex (extremely suspect timelines but it's too complicated to think about) and she's got Pyrrhic Victory tattooed across her knuckles even though she just.. keeps losing?

The only way they can be happy is for both of them to quit prisoner's dilemma style but neither of them could live with themselves if they did that and

(Josh fundamentally cares about the game, it's not learned it's innate, so he's not a perfect Fiyero figure, but I don't have to figure that part out!)

(there's no Oz, and not really a Morrible either, The Public and The Press are close but too amorphous however similar their roles are)

Idk there's no way it ends well for them, but in a different way, because TWW is a liberal fantasy where neither of their worldviews can possibly win and Oz is a fascist regime where Glinda can only hope to navigate the fallout but whatever happens they run into each other at a fundraiser 10 years down the line, both unhappily married, and Don't Talk About It